Solace
by Acteon Carolsfeld
Summary: Being here, being the one to do this, is only natural. Breakdown had not known what an "angel" was, but Knockout must have been his. It's only too bad, however, that the medic realized a little too late.


**WARNING:** Blood; gore; torture

Continuity: TF: Prime; right after "The Human Factor"

Disclaimer: Do not own anything recognizable as canon.

Recommended Listening: w w w . youtube ( d o t ) c o m / watch?v=0Yu5zEHgFa0

("Mareta, mareta no'm faces plorar")

* * *

Solace

"Please! _Please_! Let me—Just let me talk to Lord Megatron again. I'm sure I can change his mind, convince him to give me another chance! Please, give me another chance!"

What a joke.

There was only one mech Lord Megatron allowed second chances to, and that mech was all by his lonesome on the alien planet below, the alien planet that took precious someones from those who would mourn them.

"Strap him down," Knockout instructed the drones. "Make sure it's uncomfortable."

He turned his back while the drones worked. There was much shouting and scuffling, but when he turned around with his tray of tools, the abomination was tied down to the berth, squirming and straining against the bonds.

"Leave me," the medic said, walking to stand beside the berth. "_Me_", not "_us_". He would never acknowledge this vile creature as company.

The drones left after a brief bow. Silence hung in the med bay, despite the continuous pleas and the sputtering of an engine in stress. Knockout took his time in examining every item on the tray. Their pristine edges glinted under the surgical lamps, reflecting blades of light that cut across his faceplate.

He set the tray down on his medical cart, and pulled out a box from the lower compartment. The creature froze, charred edges of its optics widening as the medic took off the lid.

The saw disk glistened. Knockout transformed his hand, and unclipped his usual attachment. With a click, the new equipment snapped into place. A surge of warmth spread through his data streams, and the saw hummed, neat, jagged teeth gleaming as the disk slowly spun.

"W-Wait. Wait!" The creature whispered.

Knockout ignored its face, and drowned out the wailing scream with a roaring whirr of the saw.

The teeth bit into the derma. It spat chips of paint. A high, thin screech, with flying sparks, rang inside the medbay as tiny, sharp blades sunk into dense metal. Cooling fans stuttered. Screams echoed. The first gurgling eruption of energon splattered from the incision. It sprayed with the blur of rotating saw, and there was heat on Knockout's faceplate, heat that splashed and slid down the slight curve of his cheeks.

"Stop! _Stop_!"

The cut was a straight line down the center of the heaving chassis. The blue now glowed, burn marks coated under a pooling puddle. The medic stopped his saw, and shifted his parts until his digits once again emerged. The disk was too wide for a full transformation, so it sat against the inside of his forearm, as though embedded in the smooth limb.

Knockout reached for the tray, and took the retractors. "…Oh _god_…!" The creature gasped, but the stricken exclamation was quickly overwhelmed by a ringing cry. Long, fanged hooks sunk into the delicate circuitry beneath thick plating. Their slight curvature slid easily into the opening, digging deep.

By a hard push, the handles lodged into place at the sides of the berth. The medic made a slight turn, and tapped at the keys of a nearby console. Machinery beeped and strummed. A hiss of hydraulics, and the hooks began to pull, peeling back the wet, filthy plating.

Fuel lines burst. Filaments stretched and tore. The creature tossed back its head, and it roared, mouth agape. The sound hit the walls. It reverberated until the whole room was driven full by the note of agony. The plating crinkled and bent. It ripped from its inner circuitry, leaving behind a plain of broken, bloody nodes and splinters.

A loud, high-pitched tear, and the chassis lay exposed, organs soaking in a pool of translucent blue. Knockout tugged a suction tube from the overhanging ring of equipments. The creature writhed and cried, noises atop the steady hum of machine interspersed with irregular, hitched squelching. The tube drank up the fluids. The medic placed it aside, and reactivated his saw.

It was even messier.

Parts flew from the chassis by the blurring, teethed disk. They stung when they struck, before sliding from red, polished plating and dropping to the floor with a wet splatter. Knockout paused the saw, and wiped his face. Bits of metal left scratches on his skin, but he only brushed them away, and leaned down closer to the dissected chassis. His optics ached, so he rubbed them with his fingers. The stressed systems under his digits were overheating, drying energon into fume that irritated his sensitive optical lenses.

He blinked, and reactivated the saw with a lurching whirr. The creature sobbed and begged, spluttering, broken words that no longer made any sense to the Decepticon medic.

The spark chamber.

Knockout leaned back, and his lips smiled. He detached the saw, and put it down onto the tray.

The tray, which was now littered with carelessly thrown equipment drenched in glowing stains.

With gentle fingers, he ran a line down the center of the locked folds. The mechanics, recognizing his touch, clicked and slid apart, despite the efforts of the squirming parasite within them. Breakdown could never refuse him. Even in death, his body remembered, in place of the spark that had left behind its promised mate.

The parasite screamed, the sound amplified by the vocalizer. With a quick flick of a scalpel, the metallic tang gutted out, and only the vibration of organic matter remained, a tiny disturbance that did not even reach the walls. Knockout took the forceps, and carefully pinched around the soft, meaty limbs. Blood oozed out, red, and it covered the purple that had blossomed in patches over the stretch of pale membrane called skin.

So easily punctured.

Knockout squeezed the handles, and there were cracks within the straining muscle. The parasite howled, the whites of its watery eyes bulging with thin, spider-web vessels. The skin broke, and small globs of flesh bubbled from the crevices between the tips of the forceps. With a laser scalpel, the medic seared the limbs from their connected cables, and smoke rose, leaving a putrid odor in the air that spread worse than rotting corpses.

The parasite stopped screaming. Its eyes were wide, mouth equally so, but it had stopped its shrieks of pain. The veins in its neck protruded from its brittle skin, as though the lightest touch would burst them. Its entire body, what was left of it, was moist with condensation, a layer of excretion that shined where untouched by the red of blood. It was still alive, but very soon, it would finally give Knockout the satisfaction he had craved since its first transgression against his Breakdown.

There, right behind the parasite's head, was the proof of his ownership of this frame.

There, in a shadowed corner of the spark chamber, was his designation, messy, hurried script carved by a laser welder.

They could not bond, not during the war, so this had been the next best thing.

Breakdown had insisted to be awake during the procedure, brushing aside Knockout's offer of pain inhibitors. His roars had been glorious, and Knockout had never been so happy, spark a swirling star of heat tingling through every sensor cluster.

The smile on the medic's lips wavered, but he pulled up his derma, etching it in place. He raised the scalpel, optics zoomed in on the scrawling strokes of his name. His fingers tightened around the handle, the tips of his digits digging into the warm, hard metal. The irises of his optical lenses spiraled. The black of his pupils widened, and the red pierced the shadows, brighter than even the surgical lamps splashing light from above.

A brush of a large hand across his cheek.

A huff of a rumbling, exhausted laugh.

The glimmer of fondness behind yellow optics.

He stabbed the scalpel down, and red spurted, erupting out of the parasite's mouth in a surging stream. It flowed from the edges of the scalpel, from where the blade had pierced into the fleshy sack of soft, wet organs.

Knockout watched, and only then did he notice his struggling intakes, and his shivering ex-vents.

The medbay was quiet now.

No more pleas.

No more screams.

Knockout stayed, arched over the body of his promised mate, and his breathing laboured, smile quivering at the corners of his stretched lips.

"…Breakdown…"

A hitch.

"…Breakdown."

His arms shook. His joints grew weak.

He leaned down, and touched forehead with the large mech on his medical berth.

"Breakdown…" He whispered, optics a hazy glow into the darkened pits that should have looked back.

"Do you know," He asked, "what an 'angel' is?"

The energon on his faceplate gathered, and fell onto the cheeks below.

"…The humans," He hushed, "They say that it's someone who watches over you, someone who's made you a better bot."

Splatter.

Splatter-splatter.

"I think you would've appreciated that sentiment."

A huff of trembling laughter.

"I think—"

He shut his optics.

"-you would've thought it _me_."

The surgical lamps left a soft buzz in the air.

They framed his silhouette with glowing, white light.

Energon continued to fall, like drops of rain, sliding past scrapes and burns that would've never stayed should their bearer never left his medic.

However, by the end, all that was left was an empty husk.

An empty husk.

When Soundwave arrived to take it away, Knockout kept his back turned.

He smiled.

And the tears fell, leaving glistening tracks over the energon dripping from his chassis.

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**Notes: **Inspired by _evilwinnie_'s "Damn Silas" on deviantart (URL: evilwinnie. deviantart ( d o t ) c o m / art / TFP-S2-Ep19-Damn-Silas-327495204 ) and Park Chan-Wook's "Vengeance Trilogy".

I honestly wasn't particularly inclined to write about that episode, but when I saw _winnie _'s artwork, I simply had to. It made me very, very sad.

That's partly why I didn't want to write about "The Human Factor". I just wanted to be happy that Silas got his come-uppance. But then I saw that artwork. X'D

Review please?


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